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Romantic Relationships Across Boundaries: Global and Comparative Perspectives This is a repository copy of Romantic relationships across boundaries: global and comparative perspectives. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/148184/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Moses, J. and Woesthoff, J. (2019) Romantic relationships across boundaries: global and comparative perspectives. The History of the Family, 24 (3). pp. 439-465. ISSN 1081-602X https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2019.1634120 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The History of the Family on 19/08/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1081602X.2019.1634120 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. 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[email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Romantic Relationships across Boundaries: Global and Comparative Perspectives Introduction to the special issue on “Romantic Relationships across Boundaries: Global and Comparative Perspectives”, The History of the Family Julia Moses, Department of History, University of Sheffield / Institute of Sociology, University of Göttingen Julia Woesthoff, Department of History, DePaul University In response to the mass globalization of the twenty-first century and associated migration, a recent boom in social-scientific research has analyzed various manifestations of “binational”i, interreligious and interracial romantic relationships in the present and recent past. This special issue, which builds on a panel of the 2018 European Social Science History Conference on intermarriage, seeks to historicize this research by drawing on key case studies from around the world and across time and building on relevant historiography and theoretical literature. It seeks to chart how intermarriage and other forms of interracial, binational and interreligious romantic relationships took shape: who participated in these relationships? How common were they, and in which circumstances were they practiced (or banned)? With a global, diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, we also aim to question some of the categories behind relationships of various kinds – whether intermarriage, interracial, interreligious or binational unions. Central to these questions, we argue, is the issue of boundary formation. Here, we draw on social-scientific research that has emphasized multiple boundaries involved in the creation of identity and groups (for an overview, see Lamont and Molnár, 2002). We also highlight the intersectionality of those boundaries, meaning that notions about ethnicity, religion, gender and social class often overlap and intersect in various ways when it comes to relationships (Anthias, Cain and Yuval-Davis, 1 1992; Collins, 1998; see also McClintock, 1995). As Beate Collet has recently suggested, “conjugal mixedness” is perhaps a more accurate form of words to discuss intermarriage (and, by implication, other kinds of romantic relationships) because it denotes the complexity of identities involved in the making and lived experiences of these relationships (Collet, 2015). Contributions to this collection tap a range of questions related to these issues, such as how did geographical boundaries – for example, across national lines, distinctions between colonies and metropoles or metaphors of the “East” and the “West” – shape the treatment of intermarriage? What role have social and symbolic boundaries, such as presumed racial, confessional or socio-economic divides, played in relationships? To what extent and in which ways were those boundaries blurred in the eyes of contemporaries? How have bureaucracies and the law contributed to the creation of boundaries preventing romantic unions? Not least, what can we learn about relationships in the past by crossing our own disciplinary boundaries today? Romantic relationships, we suggest, provided a key test case for boundary crossings because they brought into stark relief assumptions not only about community and assimilation, but also about the sanctity of the intimate sphere of love and family. These assumptions could be found in different societies around the world, and across time, as the contributions to this collection show. The emphasis here is especially on the period between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, which were a flashpoint for considerations about the relationship between race, culture and family formation. This period witnessed the dramatic turn of states and laws around the world to a focus on regulating the family, as marriage and the family came under the aegis of state constitutions and away from the sole authority of religious bodies (Moses, 2017; Cott, 2000). In parallel, the “first age of globalization”ii at the turn of the twentieth century saw new cultural encounters take form, forged through the expansion of European empires, 2 a spike in global economic migration facilitated by new transportation technologies and the rise of mass communication through daily newspapers and the telegraph (Osterhammel, 2014; Osterhammel and Petterson, 2005; Bayly, 2004). As a result, kinship networks were stretched across oceans, from metropoles to colonies and from countries exporting workers to growing economies searching for labour from abroad (Kok, 2010). And, citizenship, symbolized by the passport, came to be defined, reified and problematized in new ways, with major implications for thinking about national belonging and the unity of the family (Fahrmeir, 2007; Torpey, 2000; Bredbenner, 1998). At the same time, the growth of anthropology and related social sciences as disciplines contributed to the problematization of race, culture and cultural difference (Pels and Salemink, 1999; Penny and Bunzl, 2003; Tilley and Gordon, 2007; Marchand, 2009; Conklin, 2013). These encounters came to a head in the First and Second World Wars, which witnessed a new era of nationalism across the world alongside a call to return to the home and family as a safeguard against the uncertainties of a world at war and faced by severe economic fluctuations (May, 1988; Harsch, 2007; Beaumont, 2013; Hagemann and Michele, 2014).iii After the Second World War, a new era of global connections reshaped family relations yet again. Labour shortages in Europe meant the influx of workers from outside Europe, resulting in renewed outcry about intermarriage. And, many of these immigrants came from former European colonies, which highlighted tensions about racial, national and religious difference related to boundary-crossing relationships (for example, Woesthoff, 2017). Throughout this period, therefore, crossing boundaries for romantic relationships often proved problematic for mixed couples and their families. These unions almost universally evoked anxieties, criticism, and efforts to prevent them, though how these processes were problematized varied over time and at specific junctures. The articles in this collection are by no means an 3 exhaustive exploration of the longstanding and wide-ranging issues in the global history of boundary-crossing relationships. The contributions are nevertheless able to offer insights into a number of different countries and continents, utilizing diverse archives, sources and approaches. They illuminate how historical actors and institutions defined, challenged, and negotiated belonging in a variety of contexts. With its exclusive focus on what contemporaries perceived as “mixed” unions, this special issue makes possible a sustained exploration of the various histories of these relationships, enabling us to highlight the remarkable commonalities between them across time and space without losing sight of national and cultural specificities. In short, it shows how romantic relationships served an essential function in various societies in the foundation and perpetuation of cultural as well as national unity and stability. By definition, mixed couples as well as the families they created defied adherence to established norms on which national and cultural unity were based. In the process, they revealed the tenuous and at times contradictory character of the seemingly self-evident categories on which ideas of belonging, identity and order were built and social boundaries maintained. In addressing these issues, we emphasize the complex interplay between perceptions of relationships, the processes through which they became subject to regulation – whether informally through local communities or formally through the law and the state, and the participation of individuals – as well as their families and members of the local communities – in shaping these unions. In doing so, we build on a rich body of social-scientific and historical scholarship on intermarriage and related romantic relationships that has gained momentum especially over the last three decades. While social-scientific studies have focused primarily on process-oriented questions of assimilation and integration, historical work in this area has broadly been concerned with
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